


Sweet is the Word for You

by leftennant



Series: Road Trip of Champions [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies), Wintershock - Fandom
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Piano playing Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 06:19:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6459196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftennant/pseuds/leftennant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filed under ‘Things Darcy Hadn’t Known About Bucky’ was the small, amazing fact that he could play the piano.   This little scrap of information was also filed under ‘Things Bucky Hadn’t Remembered About Himself’.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet is the Word for You

**Author's Note:**

> So this morning when I logged onto tumblr, there were gifs of Sebastian Stan playing the piano in Political Animals right at the top of my feed, and this little fic just sort of accidentally happened. 
> 
> Darcy's aunt is based on my real life Great Aunt Sarah, who actually _did_ run away to become a vaudeville showgirl in NYC at age seventeen. She drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney, spoke fluent Italian, knew honest to god famous mobsters back in the day, and had some of the best damn stories you ever heard. (Although she did not, in fact, moon William Randolph Hearst, but trust me, she would have. She was just that kind of woman.)
> 
> *************************************************

Filed under ‘Things Darcy Hadn’t Known About Bucky’ was the small, amazing fact that he could play the piano. This little scrap of information was also filed under ‘Things Bucky Hadn’t Remembered About Himself’. In fact, him playing the piano didn’t even come up until one day when they were visiting Darcy’s Great-Aunt Ida in Passaic. 

Aunt Ida _loved_ Bucky. She was a stooped, wrinkled tartar, who spoke with a thick Italian accent, and enjoyed making most of Darcy’s family completely miserable. Her sharp tongue didn’t extend to Darcy, however, and that meant she was one of Ida's only relatives who visited the old woman on a regular basis.

Not only did Aunt Ida love Bucky, but she recognized him on sight. One of the benefits of having a relative who lived through WWII was that said relative was a Howling Commandos fangirl. She still had old newspaper clippings from the war squirreled away in various dusty scrapbooks. Bucky pored over them while Darcy helped her aunt get together some sandwiches for lunch. 

“How is he in the sack?” Ida asked, getting out a set of highball glasses that Darcy had been coveting since she was twelve.

She looked over at the keenly twinkling eyes of her aunt and said, “Amazing.”

Aunt Ida nodded. “He looks it. You can always tell. Something about the way they walk.”

“Not for nothing, girls,” Bucky’s voice sounded from the parlor, “but my ears are burning out here.”

“That’s because we’re talking about you, rompicoglioni,” Ida retorted. “And you’d better get used to it if you want to be with my niece. Now, how about a Bloody Mary with your sandwich?”

“Tom Collins,” Bucky yelled back, and Darcy grinned.

“I’ll Tom Collins _him_ ,” her aunt muttered. “Che palle. Now I have to dig out the godforsaken gin.”

Aunt Ida and Bucky caught up on old times over lunch, while her niece listened with a growing smile on her face. Ida had run away to be a showgirl in New York when she was eighteen. There was nothing and nobody she hadn’t done or met back in the thirties and forties. Most of her stories completely scandalized the rest of the family, but Darcy loved them. She'd already knew every one by heart, but getting to hear them told again to fresh ears was totally worth it.

“....and that’s how I ended up on a balcony on Fifth Avenue in the altogether with Mae West and Edgar Bergen, drinking sidecars and mooning William Randolph Hearst,” Ida reminisced. “Those were good days.”

“They were,” Bucky said. Then he glanced over at Darcy, and continued, “So are these.”

“My niece seems to think so as well,” Aunt Ida replied. 

“I’m banking on that,” Bucky told her. “So, what happened after you mooned Hearst?”

“Oh, well, that bischero called the police of course. Which is a whole other story.”

And Ida was off, telling them what happened after the cops arrived in Mae West’s penthouse. Over an hour passed like that, until all the sandwiches were eaten, and they’d started in on the cheesecake. Somewhere around her second piece, Ida started flagging. Darcy noticed it right away. Her aunt wasn’t as peppy, and her eyelids had begun to droop.

“Want me to help you upstairs, Aunt Ida?” she asked, getting up from her seat.

“No. I want to be nineteen again, and ask your bello boyfriend to help me upstairs,” Ida replied, “but like that sassy young man in the tight pants used to say, ‘You can’t always get what you want’.”

“She means Mick Jagger,” Darcy said to Bucky. “Don’t let her fool you with her innocent old lady act, either. Aunt Ida loves the Rolling Stones. She’s seen them seventeen times, and owns all the records.”

“Seen them?” Ida cackled. “That poor boy never knew what hit him. I bet he still thinks about me. And don’t you roll your eyes behind my head either, young lady. I might have been in my forties, but I was a sexy woman. Mature. Ripe. In the prime of my life.”

“You’re still beautiful,” Bucky said, standing up. “Prettiest girl in the room next to mine.”

“I know it. Beauty like this, it never fades. Just gets better with age, eh? Darcy, mia cara, be a good girl, and get my pills. I have to take them before my nap.” Ida lifted up her wrinkled cheek for Bucky to kiss. “I had a hell of a good time meeting you. Come see me again when those fools give you a day off.”

Fifteen minutes later Darcy had Ida settled in for her nap, and came back downstairs to find Bucky standing by her Aunt’s old upright piano, absently picking out I’ll Be Seeing You with his right hand.

“I didn’t know you could play,” she said.

“Neither did I. Just sorta walked over and it happened.” he replied, frowning when he hit a wrong note. “Maybe I can’t.”

“Both hands might help,” Darcy suggested, tugging the piano bench out and sitting on it.

“Any requests?” he asked, joining her at the bench.

She shook her head. “Whatever comes to mind.”

His hands moved restlessly for a moment, notes echoing in the air without any kind of pattern, and then a melody started to fill the room. It sounded like something from the thirties or forties, and Darcy tilted her head trying to figure out what it was.

“I don’t recognize it,” she eventually said.

“Sweet is the Word for You,” Bucky replied. “Used to be a big hit back before I enlisted. Dorsey, I think. Although everybody kind of did everything back then. I uh...I’m not sure, but I feel like it might have been my sister’s favorite.”

He moved onto what sounded like the bridge, fingers of his left hand tapping dully each time the vibranium tips made contact with the keys. Bucky glanced down at them, and a furrow of annoyance appeared between his brows. Darcy watched with concern as his irritation grew. Finally, instead of starting the chorus, he abruptly stopped playing. With a sound of disgust, he spread out the fingers on his prosthetic. Then he balled them into a fist, and hid it in his lap.

“Sorry,” he said. 

Darcy leaned closer, nudging his shoulder with hers. “For what?”

“For this.” Bucky lifted his hand, metal plates flashing in the afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows. “Ruining the song.”

“It didn’t,” she replied. “I loved the song. I love this hand, too. You know that.”

He huffed. “That’s because you don’t know any different, and you’re being…”

His sentence trailed off, and she looked up at him sharply. “I’m being what?”

There was no reply from Bucky. He just scrubbed his right hand over his chin in the way he did when he was trying to decide what to say.

“Hey.” She nudged him again. “Whatever the thing is you are thinking? I promise you, aside from the fact that I know you would rather have the left arm you were born with, there is nothing about the one you have now that I would change. Okay?”

He moved on the bench, body turning slightly away from her, and Darcy could see a muscle twitching in his jaw. 

“Bucky?” She gently took his cybernetic hand in hers, and pulled it towards her until he was looking at her again. “I’m serious.”

Darcy could feel every small movement of the plates beneath her fingertips as she held his hand. He’d once told her that they moved in response to touch. It was part of how they relayed information about whatever they’d come contact with to his nervous system. She slowly rubbed the pad of one thumb over his palm in lazy, concentric circles that had him leaning into her by the fifth pass. The warmth of his body seeped into her where he was pressed to her side. Darcy let her head fall onto his shoulder, and moments later he buried his face in her hair with a sigh.

“You’re awful good to me, doll.”

His voice was muffled, but the emotion in his tone was hard to miss. She brought his hand up to her lips and kissed the knuckles.

“Nah, I’m just being honest,” Darcy told him. “If you want me to be good to you, we should go home. Aunt Ida is an outrageous piece of work, but don’t think that extends to her being okay with me seducing my boyfriend on her piano bench.”

“Oh yeah? You’re planning on seducing me?”

“Bucky Barnes, I’m planning on ruining you.”

He gave her one of his most suggestive grins. “What guy would argue with that?”

“I know, right? Come on, handsome. Let’s go home.”

*******************************************************************

Two weeks later a delivery truck pulled up outside the Avenger’s Facility. Darcy was completely baffled when she got a call saying the delivery was for her. The delivery guys handed her an envelope, and the minute she read the contents she started laughing.

 

_Mia cara Darcy, the only relative I have worth a good goddamn,_

_I might be ninety-eight, but my hearing hasn’t gone yet, young lady. Hope you can put this piano bench to good use, and also the piano. You tell that boy of yours that it’s not a gift, it’s a loan, and the two of you will be paying in monthly visits. No excuses! Not only that, but next time he can drink a Bloody Mary like a respectable human being on a Sunday afternoon. I’m not putting up with that Tom Collins merda unless he wants to make it himself, then by all means, he can have at it._

_All my love to you and yours, mia cara. Except your father. That boccalone can rot in hell, and he knows why. How I ended up with such a useless bunch of stick in the mud relatives I will never understand. It wasn’t for lack of trying to corrupt them, that’s for sure. The only one worth any salt is you. You’re getting all my money, that’s a fact, and the rest of them can go suck the proverbial egg for all I care. Don't tell them, though. I enjoy making them dance a little. It's the little things in life, Darcy. Never forget that._

_Yours,_

_Aunt Ida  
(The outrageous piece of work who would have been just fine with you making whoopie on my piano bench. Lord knows it hasn’t seen any action in years.)_

 

Darcy was still smiling as she watched the movers place the piano in her living room. That night she and Bucky christened the piano bench after he played I’m Yours. It took a couple tries for him to remember the whole song, but eventually he did, fingers rippling over the keys as the soft jazz music built and grew. This time he didn’t seem bothered by the clicking of his fingers on the ivory. Not only that, but he put them to even better use once the song was finished. Needless to say, Darcy had never wanted a piano, but having one turned out to be awesome.


End file.
